[x]

tear the skeleton from his comfortzonei want to build a skyscraper, seventeen stories high
and fill each floor with a story from the people who never said goodbye.

i.
a middle child, born in 1994,
she always wanted to be loved the most
until she learned how to give a blowjob
in an alley behind Miss China’s Takeaway
at knife point.

ii.
she lost her childhood
to an ocean who always thought it was small
and never stopped pushing its borders.

iii.
he’s not sure how he’s supposed to live without her.
staring at the closed coffin, he loses the ability to want to.

iv.
it’s not fair, she thinks,
that the house creaks when she’s trying to sleep,
but when

fast-forward through the goodbyesthis is the beginning of the end
“i know you,” he says.
and he looks defeated, he looks sad, he looks like
he's a boy who may one day realize how much
he cares for you, so you cut him off and say,
“minus all the secrets i don’t tell anyone.”
“well, yeah, minus those.”
“then you don’t know me at all.”

and then you tell him,
i love you. but you don’t use those words
because those are taboo. are jinxed.
are knock on wood three times fast.
instead you press him in a hug and say,
i’m sorry, knowing he won’t understand
that this is the first time you ever cared for some

not all humans go to heavencock it
april 23 2008
“bye mom. i love you so much, i swear
i’ll be home soon.”
“please, you’re only eighteen, you have your
whole life ahead of you, please
don’t throw it away.”
“i’m going, mom. i’m going overseas
but i swear i’ll be back before you
miss me. love you!”

aim it.
now
most nights he shakes himself awake
with the vision of bombs and fire and bullets
still imprinted on his eyelids.
he doesn’t know what to call them.
the dreams, i mean.
what do you call bad dreams when
you’ve already lived the nightmare?

his therapist says his problem
is he think

stardusti keep myself covered most days.
my waist is a melancholy echo of
the way he touched me 2 summers ago.

the way my right shoulder leans slightly lower
than my left is evidence of far too many misdemeanors.

the cracks decorating my ribcage are memories
of a brisk december morning when my pride
clawed its way out before i was ready.

i am not old; just soulful
with the kind of passion
that flickers like the candles
i light in lieu of all my selfish prayers
that i gave up expecting answers to.

i sob tearlessly & break into smaller pieces
of myself nightly. i am afraid that the salt water
will seep through the scratches in my skin
and remind

starsi pray that someday soon, in a lonesome winter, your bones will cease to ache.
regrets will no longer break your morals like glass figurines,
you will not ask God to pardon your sins.
you will forgive yourself.

i hope, for your sake, that your butterfly-flutter eyes
will only be dampened with tears worthy of shedding.
your glory will shine out of those 2 crystal windows
and you will finally know what freedom feels like.

one day, in the midst of a dreary december, i wish for your wings to open wide
and carry you to heights far past any you have ever experienced.
your lungs will become blooming forests
with snippets of poetry carved into

a town i don't want to call mineon the right of the turquoise green sign
that welcomes you to columbia,
there are two gas stations and a church.
on the left side, there’s a morgue.

when i was five years old, my father pulled over
and stopped on the side of the road while black car
after black car passed us, going the other way.
“did we know them?” i asked.
“no,” he said, putting the car in drive. “but someone did.”

at seven, mr. jimmy down at the ice cream shop
let me have free samples of all the new flavors he made
before he put them out to the public.
a favor, he called it, for his little henry.

(years later i would realize t

stop me if you've heard this one beforei.
there is a man on the corner of my street
who gave me a bottle of bleach
and told me if i drank it, i'd finally feel clean.

but i gave it back to him, and went home to take a shower.

because i am almost happy,
and i do not want to mess that up by
chugging bleach or fingering knives or thinking too much
about that man who turned my insides cold
from inside of his car.

because this has to be happy.
this has to be what happy feels like.
it feels like god gave me a vodka bottle
filled with nature and people and oceans and deserts and seas,
cause see, it feels like i'm drunk on life.

ii.
i have this nervous habit of scratching

lukewarmshe had the kind of voice
that seemed to be stuck
in the hour of four o'clock
in the morning - soft
and tired and luring,
mumbling her way through
subways and tunnel lights
all pale yellow with noise.

there was tea and long baths
and longer absences,
hiccups of breath
the best
she could do.
long springs and
longer falls,
one equinox to the next
and still the bad
was never that bad
and the good
was never that
good,
and she continues to hum
the birds continue to sing
the apples continue to
grow and
sour and
fall,

and bury themselves
again.

truthsi.

there are 2 things that not even the most
forceful of rains can cleanse me of:

-memories
-mistakes

ii.

sometimes, i feel like a caged lion.
only with a lot more impatience
and a lot less resilience.

iii.

i have yet to discover what it means to be content.
i am either too stagnant or too fluid.
no middle ground.

iv.

i have mastered the art of leaving.
it's the idea of moving on that still haunts me.

v.

i fear that the light in my eyes is so dim that it will burn out
before even i have a chance to see the world with it.

vi.

i am not as clever as i pretend to be.

vii.

someone needs to teach me that
i don't need reassurance; i

Mea CulpaI.
I thought you were the rain, but no,
I was the rain. I meant to drown you. I
wanted you to be inescapably drenched-
your trachea clogged, your mouth an 'O'
of desperate gasping, your lips parted
and blue. If I wasn't enough to die for,
I wouldn't ever be enough.

II.
Your disappearances were noted with
darkened clouds- thick and heavy, tight
with waiting. You always returned with a
thunderclap, moving me to a downpour of
deprived longing. I was a flood and you
were a desert begging to be a sea. But
flood-waters river into oceans, and
deserts are meant to be dry.

III.
It was selfish of me to treat you
like a boat- I l

It wasn't a mistake.I've dragged my lungs
through packet after packet of cigarettes,
so it's no wonder to learn that all
I've got left is ash-grey and
tar-black and useless.

I left my trust in the desert.I still think
you'll leave me
someday.

a graduated game of hide-and-seek“I Need You To Tell Me Everything You Can Remember,” he says.
i close my eyes so i can’t see nothing i don’t want to—like
the red blue white lights on the cars—
and think back years and minutes and hours.

the playground is overrun by jungles and pirate ships.
a battlefield of skinned elbows and dirt faces and,
“mommy, can’t i please stay a few more minutes?
we’re about to defeat the dread captain Roberts!”

we’re peeking out of our boats into the ocean.
it is summer. we may never go back to school again.
we are pirates, we are astronauts,
we are sky-big.
our sunday clothes are

Ruthyou were tired and stagnant with your
bones piercing through your skin.
your body was a war zone.

black & purple bruises splashed across you
like blood on the concrete of the place you
could never call home. your parched mouth
& crooked little-girl teeth were never sanctuary.

the innocence was brutally beaten out of you
until you were brittle.

you lived in Germany your first 6 years
and then moved to Latvia.
you existed in a place they called a ghetto.

that dual-triangle on your left arm defined you.
it was the reason your scabbed lips couldn't
whisper prayers to the heavens, begging God
to save you from the mean men.

you were 8 when

001 i am a whirlwind of
bruised knees
(purple)

an aching heart
(dark blue)

twisted guts
(red)

&
a regret that could
crumble mountains.
(green-green-green)

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Matthew M.Matthew Minor married Tim McGraw's daughter
When he was in preschool,
And only in Music City.

He's all sharp angles, curly hair,
And geography bowls he won in fourth grade.
He's holding onto things and letting her go,
Brought up on family politics and Southern beliefs.

Our second grade Spanish teacher
Filmed Matthew's laugh and put it on Youtube.

He's seventeen missed calls and
Gary, Indiana, Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana
My home sweet home.

Matthew got all the solos in elementary school
And loves songs and musicals no one else
Has ever heard.

He didn't really want Mrs. Fortner to video his laugh,
So for ten minutes of trying, al

criss-crossed veins for the trigger girliii.
"you're not okay."
"I'm fine."
"no, you're lying. i can tell. everyone has a trigger."
"What's mine?"
"you smile."

ix.
she's walking around in circles
and trying to pick up her broken pieces, but they're
not fitting like they used to,
something's damaged beyond repair.

v.
"Why are you doing this to yourself?"
"because i've forgotten what it feels like to heal."

viii.
she regrets not cutting deeper, when she sees the life
still running through her veins, and her parents asleep
on the hospital chairs.

ii.
she comes to school the next day with a bandaged hand
and blue eyes that seem a bit dimmer.
"i broke a mirror."
an

fishbowl reality.the boy next to me just died
but he pressed play again and started
to chase his tail across a screen of purple blocks.
five seats away, a girl is trying to draw a human heart.
another girl is trying to finish her test.

"this class ends at 2 and it is 1:55."

the boy next to me has given up and
is checking his e-mail, while still others
pull out their computers to start clicking
away at letters that will never fade.

i am sitting here, wondering how to tell my mother
her sister tried to commit suicide.

some people say that an umbrella turned upwards
is a sign of bad luck, but there is a lot of bad luck
that has to do with umbrellas

pumpkins, pogo-sticks, and lip-to-lip
dear october.

the leaves haven't fallen yet.
maybe this year, they will not.
i am sick of things dying prettier than they live.

i am walking streets full of dead carcasses
and making sure to step on them to feel the bones crack
beneath my feet and it makes me feel powerful
and alive and deadly and beautiful.

i am three months away from january
and my unfulfilled new year's resolution is still
sitting heavily on my collarbone, trickling down my ribs
melting into the soles of my shoes.

last year, i celebrated the new year in my friend's friend's apartment
in india and two minutes after the countdown was over,
people set off fire

ChaseFor the third grade talent show,
Chase Tidwell dressed up as a cowboy
And preformed "YMCA" with an Indian,
Construction worker, cop, and a soldier.

In first grade, his biggest accomplishment
Was that his initials spelt out the word, "CAT",
And for the first couple of years I cannot remember a time
When I didn't have to tell my friends,
"Yes, our names rhyme. No, we're not soul mates."
He was also the first person in my grade
Who learned how to say, "Hello, my name is Chase," in Spanish.

Hola, me llamo Chase. Hola, me llamo Chase. Hola, me llamo Chase

Nine years have passed,
And not much has changed.
Chase became taller, his brai

Daniellei am sorry this took so long
to write. i think i have been too focused on
reality and how the universe is big and Danielle is so small
that i forgot that Danielle thinks the universe
will never be too big.

she grabs my hand and drags me down the hallway:
"c'mon, Grace- skip!
if you think too much, your life will stick like that!"

no one can be that happy all the time,
so i think a lot of the time it's fake
and i think a lot of the time she just wants to stop.
but she doesn't, and she does it on purpose.
because-

Danielle tells me, "your hair looks
heavy metal, today" because she knows i think
people lie when they say things li

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count to infinity before you sleep.

by ~MisfitableGrae, Jan 18, 2013, 10:55:31 AM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

_{cause i know
there are days when
it's painful to even breathe,
your throat closing up on the knowledge
that you don't know
how much longer you'll be waiting on this
band-aided, superglued planet.

every cell in your body vying to be the next to die,
and all you have to tell them is
maybe. maybe next time.

those are the days you spend
cutting rose thorns into your palms
and clenching your fists tight around
jagged reflections and prismed rainbows.
the days you realize
we're losing so much faster than we're learning.
we're maturing faster than we're growing.
adults stuck in the bodies of kids,
moving around, making the mistakes
no one ever wants to look back on.

those are the days you realize
it's not worth living here anymore.

you're using too many burnt-like sugar words
to get what you want, a mistaken human in wolf's clothing.
your lies are becoming louder than your screams,
but if the knife fits wear it on your skin.

this is the age where you feel caught between
cigarettes and skittles.
everything you should have been hanging in the balance
with everything you wish you were.
where your skin's too big and your footprint too small,
you're getting too tired, you're getting too old.

you're starting to realize
it's not worth living anymore.}

count to infinity before you sleep.by ~MisfitableGrae

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

_{my english teacher says that sometimes i mess up first and second person.

sorry i haven't been on in a while. have you ever had so many plans you think will go right but then life or something or people screw it all up and you just don't see the point anymore?

i just. i don't even know what to say on a website where i'm supposed to be able to say whatever i want.

if you're reading this, i don't want you to think it means anything—i’ve learned by now that i trust too many people i’m not supposed to.}

~AnotherPassenger Feb 20, 2013 Student General Artist

The title of your poem was used here <3

~violetense Feb 20, 2013 Student Writer

Your English teacher needs to realize that there are bigger things than grammar.

*bloodawni Feb 17, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Painful. Beautiful.

~arabesque-o Jan 27, 2013 Student Photographer

_{this is so achingly lovely. it hurts in its beauty.
you worry me though<3}

!Allurite Jan 26, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

The stanza that began with you're using too many burnt-like sugar words was so beautifully written

~tiajones Jan 19, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

i think the title is really original. i like it. (:

*your-methamphetamine Jan 18, 2013 Student Writer

_{you're using too many burnt-like sugar words
That reminds me of something, I'm not sure what. But it has an aching sense of familiarity. It's so beautifully worded. I love the imagery.

(I'm a creep, I'll say it now, but I'm here if you want to talk)}

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count to infinity before you sleep.

count to infinity before you sleep.by ~MisfitableGrae

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